Good enough – for whom? Justice and sufficiency in childhood upbringing

Resumé

This article examines how theories of justice can help determine when a child’s upbringing in parental care should be considered insufficient. Drawing on Liam Shields’ “How bad can a good enough parent be?” (2016), a sufficientarian approach is developed and defended, combining an absolute threshold of sufficiency with weighted priority below the threshold. The article argues against Shields’ comparative approach, proposing instead that the judgement of a child’s upbringing should proceed on non-comparative grounds, where what matters is whether the child falls below the threshold of sufficiency rather than the child’s relative position compared to others. Drawing on the capability approach, it is argued that the threshold should be measured in both functionings and capabilities, thereby combining concern for the child’s current well-being with concern for its future opportunities. The article thus contributes a new position to the debate on when intervention in the parent-child relationship is justified from the perspective of justice and offers a theoretical discussion of whether the capability approach can be applied to children.

Claude.ai er brugt til oversættelse af abstract fra dansk til engelsk.